Suchergebnisse

This book upturns many established ideas regarding the economic and social history of Quebec, the Canadian province that is home to the majority of its French population. It places the case of Quebec into the wider question of convergence in economic history and whether proactive governments delay or halt convergence. The period from 1945 to 1960, infamously labelled the Great Gloom (Grande Noirceur), was in fact a breaking point where the previous decades of relative decline were overturned? Geloso argues that this era should be considered the Great Convergence (Grand Rattrapage). In opposition, the Quiet Revolution that followed after 1960 did not accelerate these trends. In fact, there are signs of slowing down and relative decline that appear after the 1970s. The author posits that the Quiet Revolution sowed the seeds for a growth slowdown by crowding-out social capital and inciting rent-seeking behaviour on the part of interest groups.

AbstractThere is substantial debate over the colonial origins of divergence within the Americas. In this debate, the French Empire has been largely ignored even though, until 1760, it included Canada. This article uses recent empirical advances in our knowledge of the colonial Canadian economy to introduce the role of French institutions—most notably the institution of seigneurial tenure—into the debate on the colonial origins of divergence. It argues that the institution of seigneurial tenure in Canada when it was under French rule (up to 1760) had predatory features that help to explain why Canada was the poorest of the North American colonies.

AbstractThis paper presents the first price index for any region of Canada that spans from the colonial era to the mid‐19th century. I constructed it using prices from the account books of religious congregations with estates throughout modern‐day Quebec. It represents a substantial improvement over previous indexes thanks to the consistent price quotations in the source material, the high frequency of observations for many goods, the vast number of goods and the inclusion of numerous non‐agricultural and non‐food goods. Its price trends differ mildly from those of existing but less‐comprehensive price indexes. I link this new index with post‐1850 indexes to create a 328‐year price index for Canada.

AbstractThis article argues that the 1851 census of Canada East (the modern‐day province of Quebec) requires a set of important corrections. Using corrections based on ethnic origin composition, I demonstrate how significantly wheat and oat yields were underestimated in Canada East. More importantly, I argue that the measurement errors are not randomly distributed and that they are biased against attempts to test the role of institutions. I show how the new method of correcting the data change our interpretation of agricultural efficiency in Lower Canada in the mid‐19th century. While this correction may seem minor, it shows that in the past, the data took a form that was biased against numerous hypotheses concerning land tenure institutions.